Tuesday, 27 May 2014

Lotus not satisfied with Monaco performance

(Jean Michel Le Meur/DPPI for Renault Sport F1)

The Lotus F1 Team's Trackside Operations Director Alan Permane has described as 'very disappointing' The Enstone outfit are hoping that at the next event in Canada they will be able to reach an acceptable level of performance following a difficult start to the 2014 season.

In Monaco, Pastor Maldonado never made the start of the race after stalling on the grid just before the start of the formation lap. The team have confirmed that the Venezuelan suffered a fuel pump failure. It is unclear Gastaldi however, whether the issues came about as a result of the new fuel that the team were provided with by their supplier Total but the team are investigating the cause of the failure.

On the other side of Lotus garage, Romain Grosjean had a better race as although the Frenchman started the race from 14th place on the grid, he went on to finish the Grand Prix in 8th place to collect for point's for team Enstone. This was a significant improvement compared to last year's result as Grosjean failed to finish the event last season.

Following his points finish on Sunday, Romain Grosjean has now scored point's in the last two Grand Prix in a row in Barcelona and again in Monaco. The team are currently 7th in the Constructors championship on 8 point's equal with Toro Rosso. Speaking about the next event Permane said:

'We now look ahead to the next race and will work hard to correct issues we have seen here this weekend to get back up to an acceptable level of performance.

Deputy team principal Frederico Gastaldi confirmed that the team were feeling frustrated:

'We scored some lucky points today but our overall weekend has been disappointing. "It's been very frustrating that Pastor couldn't start the race and we have to identify the cause of this. Romain stayed focused and did a very good job to score the team some valuable points.

He concluded by saying: 'We know though that we still have work to do and Monaco certainly hasn't played to our strengths.'